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vent their being gathered in those portions where it is desired to 
keep the wild and natural state. Signs are posted at short inter- 
vals, but not until our people have become educated into the 
spirit will they also keep the letter of the law. 
Like many other evils, then, the final remedy lies in educa- 
tion. We must have more of the spirit of the poet who was 
content to ‘(gaze upon the wild rose and leave it on its stalk.” 
We may rest assured that he did not pick the “ violet by a mossy 
stone,” nor did he venture among the daffodils, those glorious 
daffodils that have made sunshine for a hundred years. Had he 
gone stumbling about among them, gathering the finest here and 
there and treading down their crisp green leaves, he could never 
have transferred the untouched vision to others 
Finally, the government has power to preserve in a large way 
the fine formations of this country. Tracts of virgin forest in 
different sections should be set aside on which Nature may con- 
tinue her experiments unmolested, tracts that should forever 
be free from the axe, and so far as possible, protected from fire. 
The climax-forests of the United States reach their highest 
development in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. 
They are of the beech-maple type, and contain not only the 
greatest number of species - trees, but also of shrubby under- 
growth ee herbaceous plan 
n the East Shore of a Michigan, there are places where 
in a half-hour’s walk, one may pass through a succession of sand- 
dunes showing all stages in vegetative development from the 
desert to the luxuriant forest. Close by the lake are the shifting 
dunes with never a plant upon them; back of these are the fixed 
dunes with a sparse vegetation of a xerophytic character ; farther 
inland are dunes where the scrub-pine gives way to the white 
pine, and the black oak is supplanted by the red and then the 
white. Each successive dune shows a richer vegetation than the 
preceding till finally the last of all has become truly mesophytic, 
and shows a forest of elm and ash and maple with seedlings of 
the beech just coming in. Here are bloodroots and hepaticas, 
and even the delicate maidenhair fern, one of the most mesophytic 
of our native plants. Such a series can teach us more than we 
